Sunday, January 15, 2017

Of the Ministry of Culture’s 100 model heritage monuments for 2016-17, eight are from Karnataka.

While two — in Hampi and Pattadakal— will find place in the first list of 25 monuments, those in Bidar and five others will find mention in the second list of 75 monuments. They include Srirangapatana, temple complexes in Aihole, Belur- Halebid, Vijayapura, and Shravanabelagola.

All these are towns that house national monuments identified by the masterlist of the Archaeological Survey of India. While towns like Hampi and Srirangapatana see high footfall, the tourism potential of towns like Bidar, Aihole and Pattadakal is yet to be exploited.

The Ministry of Culture will provide funds for the restoration and upkeep of monuments, upgrade of infrastructure and tourism promotion. This had been communicated to the ASI officers in these towns recently.

ASI officials will be tasked with building toilets, interpretation centres, audio-visual centres, cafeteria, and souvenir shops in the vicinity of the monuments.

Hi-tech illumination and light and sound facilities will be created. Archaeologists and conservation assistants will be asked to provide facilities like drinking water, apart from maintaining security. Important areas will have free Wi-Fi. All material and boards will have instructions and information in Braille.

Ramps would be built for physically-challenged persons.

Mounesh Kuruvatti, ASI conservation assistant in Bidar, said most facilities earmarked for model monuments were already available in Bidar. We have a well equipped cafeteria, an interpretation centre and other facilities like ramps and information boards. We will work on providing the rest,’’ he said. “We have three national monuments — Bidar fort, Ashtur tombs and the Madrasa of Mahmud Gawan. The challenge will be to ensure that visitors have easy access to these amenities,” he said.

The 16-ft cement concrete structure sits at the intersection of the main road with Ladgeri Cross RoadVisitors to Bidar will now be greeted with a set of art works on the Bidar- Hyderabad Road.

A 16-ft Bidriware flower vase, built in cement concrete, sits at the intersection of the main road with Ladgeri Cross Road.

A few metres away on the walls of the railway bridge is a series of paintings featuring the wildlife of Bidar, heritage places and culture.

Two teams of artists have worked on these projects. B.G. Gourishankar, sculptor from Kalaburagi, has worked on the cement Bidriware for two weeks, with a team of five artists. Anil Raj, a Bidar-based artist, and his team completed the paintings.

Installing Bidriware at the junction was the former Deputy Commissioner Anurag Tewari’s idea, said Kishor Joshi, Commissioner, Bidar Urban Development Authority. “As part of tourism promotion, he wanted to showcase Bidar’s culture. This was the first structure we created as an experiment,” he said. “We plan to build more such structures on other roads,” he added.

The flower vase has been completed and is ready for inauguration. Around 250 bags of cement, a tipper load of sand and a mini-truck load of bricks and some iron roads have been used to create the structure.

“We built a wooden platform around the structure in phases as we went up,” Mr. Gourishankar said. Created in Bidriware style, the vase has hand drawn designs on a black surface.

It is built on a platform that rises above the grade separators. Anil Raj and seven other artists began by painting the bridge white. Then they drew pictures of blackbuck and peacocks that are native to the district along with local trees such as cashew and badam. The artists experimented with modern paintings embedded with messages about environment protection on the bigger walls. “We ended up by painting the ceiling as the sky,” he said. They have covered around 5,000 sq ft of space on the walls with paintings. The former Assistant Commissioner Venkat Raja commissioned the project a few weeks ago. It has been completed in around two weeks, the artists said.

Montagu’s harrier and wood sandpiper are some of the birds that migrated to Bidar this winter.

Faced with its worst-ever drought this year, officials had taken up dredging of lakes and tanks in Bidar.

After the district received 50 per cent more rain than normal from late June to October in 2016, the waterbodies are teeming with water.

This should have been good news for all, but not so for migratory birds. In fact there has been a decrease in the number of migratory birds in the district this winter.

“We observed a dip in the number and species of migratory birds in waterbodies in and around Bidar. This year, there were only 30-40 species while normally there used to be 40-50 species,” says Major Praveen Kumar, a member of the Bidar Photography Society.

Birds, especially migratory species, like to nest at shallow and marshy lands on the borders of waterbodies, that are ideal for feeding, he said.

He also counts destruction of forests, loss of waterbodies, wetlands and other habitats due to encroachments and other reasons linked to climate change among reason for the decline.

He has urged the government to declare the Karanja Dam and other waterbodies as bird habitats that should be protected.

Vivek Hallikhedkar, a conservation activist and BPS member who has been photographing and documenting birds for ten years now, said that the district is fast losing forests and waterbodies.

“The pace of destruction is rapid while efforts to conserve waterbodies or protect forests are few,” he said.

He cites the examples of encroachment of Kamthana lake and the Naubad lake in Bidar taluk.

He feels higher awareness among people about birds will lead to better conservation.

Despite the decrease in the number of birds, members of the society managed to capture some rare migratory birds that arrived in Bidar from Europe and east Asia in Paapnash lake and other areas.

The most important was the sighting of three species of the Harrier family from Eurasia.

Monday, January 9, 2017

In State of Karnataka IL&FS Engineering & Construction Co announced on 30 December 2016 that the Company has received a Letter of Acceptance for a road contract on Bidar to Humnabad section on NH-50 from Ministry of Road Transport and Highways through CE(NH)PWD, Government of Karnataka for a total value of Rs 242.56 crore.

The Government has decided to down the shutters on the only cattle breeding farm in the State.

The 46 cattle, including 20 pure Deoni breed, at the farm in this village near Zaheerabad are to be auctioned in the next few weeks. In all probability these animals would end up at the mechanised slaughter house in the district.

The cattle breeding farm was established in 1980 with an intention to promote Deoni breed that is native to Zaheerabad in Telangana, Bidar in Karnataka and Latur in Maharashtra. Deoni is small village located near Bidar and all these areas were under the rule of Nizams. “Deoni cattle are having unique genetic material and hardy animal with majestic features. They have drooping ears, bulged forehead and body colour is spotted black and white. The animal can survives severe drought conditions. This breed needs to be promoted on the lines of Ongole breed. We had sent a proposal to the Union Government for research station at an estimated cost of 7 crore under Gokul Gram scheme,” Dr. Lakshma Reddy, Additional Director, Animal Husbandry, told The Hindu.

The Government of Karanataka has a breeding and research centre in neighbouring Bidar district while the centre here is being closed down.

The State Government has completely neglected the farm and slowly started withdrawing the staff and now there is only one veterinary doctor and six labourers. For the past one year even the budget was not sanctioned for the farm. The farm management asked a mechanised slaughter house (Allana) to pay ₹36,000 for feed and maintenance of the animals during summer. The farm authorities proposed that the purebred cattle be donated to three Goshalas located at Zaheerabad, Beeramguda and Patancheru. However, a senior official from Hyderabad turned down the proposal and directed them to auction the animals. “Once auctioned they may end up at slaughter houses,” said a veterinarian.